MIND, PSYCHE, SPIRIT
Andrew Harvey
Sacred Activism
Globe in classroom, New Orleans by Chris Jordan from "In Katrina's Wake" (2005)
I believe we are heading into the eye of a perfect storm, which threatens the human race and a great deal of nature. I think it is extremely important that we all stop denying just how dangerous, insane and savage this perfect storm of crises is, and just what it means for all of us and the world. I think you know what those crises are. There is a holocaust going on that the doomsayers had predicted. There is a retreat among many of the major religions into fundamentalism, which disorders our unity. There is the domination of a kind of corporate magnate who is brutal and addicted to power, exploitation and greed. The mass media, largely owned by corporations, is filling our minds with violence, trash and celebrity trivia, at the very moment where you and I need to be inspired, galvanized and given the authentic information.
There is a lifestyle, which you and I both live, hectic, driven and multi-tasking, which makes it almost impossible for even the most well-meaning of us to have the kind of pleasure and peace in which to hear the voice of the soul that could guide us. When you bring all of these crises together, and factor in the population explosion, what we are looking at is a perfect storm of interrelated crises that are all manifestations of a selective force - human self. This human self has lost the most fundamental connection of all, the connection with the sacred nature of creation and of life. I think it is very important that we all wake up fast, because all those who are not awake now are going to be, very soon. The crisis is not going to relent and it is going to get very much fiercer very soon.
I believe this storm of crises is an evolutionary possibility of unprecendented intensity. It gives us the opportunity to gaze into the mirror of our destiny, and to see very clearly, that unless you and I evolve to the next level of putting our deepest principles and holiest compassion and greatest passion for life into direct, clear. radical action on every level, we will simply not survive. This great death we are living, that we are manifesting out of addiction, greed, extraordinary apathy and fantastic lack of concern for life is also potentially the birth canal of an unprecedented birth. A chastened, humbled humanity, opened at last by tragedy, awakened by the knowledge of the shadow may really claim our innate, sacred consciousness, start acting from our heart and turn apocalypse into grace, nightmare into opportunity, redeem terrible tragedy by gathering together on a massive scale to transform the world.
This crisis is the equivalent on a global scale of a crisis that a mystic goes through at a certain moment on the path. In Christian mysticism it is called the 'Dark Night of the Soul'. In the metaphysical systems of Mahayana Buddhism, it is the shattering of the false or created self. Can humanity see this immense consciousness as a God-sent, God-given, God-ordained opportunity to unlearn all our dangerous attainments? If humanity could settle in the deep ground of divine inspiration and learn how to go through the shattering ordeal with authentic grace, authentic commitment to transformation, then not only will we survive, but humanity will be transformed and born into an authentic divine nature, through the death of the collective false self that is manifesting this great death and wrecking everything. What is there in us that can birth a divine humanity, transformed by tragedy, illumined by shattering knowledge and transfigured by divine grace? What force can give us the power to turn this devastating situation around?
Four years after my teacher Father Bede Griffiths died, I had a dream in which he showed me two rivers. One was a river of fire going toward the sea. The other was a river of even more intense fire. They met at the sea in a glorious, radiant, divine explosion of energy. I heard a voice saying, "These two rivers are the two noblest forces of the human psyche. They are the river of the mystic's passion for God and the river of the activist's passion for justice. When these two rivers meet, a third fire is born that is ordained to transform everything. It the fire of divine compassion and love in action."
The vision gave me a term Sacred Activism and in honour of that I wrote a book. If you believe, as I do, that we are facing extreme danger together with extreme opportunity, I ask you in the name of Buddha to get up at three o'clock in the morning someday soon, surround yourself with the peace of God in whichever way you understand it, and ask youself one question. Which of all the causes in this beleaguered, damaged world breaks my heart the most? Please dare to ask yourself this question, and dare to listen to what your heart says to you. If you do, your heart will reveal to you a sacred mission that belongs just to you, and that will be the deepest and most radiant voice of your soul. You will be given at that moment, an injunction and a direction. What you can do then is to join with other people with a similar heartbreak, and work together in your local community, to do something real about what it is that you advocate in yourself.
I talk about this vision of sacred activism widely, and I am also involved in a way of grounding it in the world called Networks of Grace. These networks are going to be cells of six to twelve people gathered around a heartbreak, or a profession, or a passion, dedicating in their local communities to start a grassroots, radical revolution of the third power; Love in Action. It is the only way we will get a chance for it to work. If we wait for corporations to transform our situation, we will wait until the last tree is burnt down. If we wait for politicians to have a major spiritual transformation and suddenly give millions away and start feeding the poor, we will be waiting for the last animal to disappear. This revolution of the soul in action depends upon you and me. We are getting real about the tragedy of where we are now, the opportunity of where we can go, and the heartbreak you and I feel. When we get real about these things, we are impelled to come together in networks of grace and do something about it.
The above is the transcript of a talk by mystical scholar, poet & translator Andrew Harvey at the NYC launch of Bhikkhu Bodhi's Buddhist Global Relief project